Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 18, 1998

"deeply flawed" by voting violations but said the overall result was still valid.

However, they warned that the same scale of irregularities, if repeated, could invalidate a run-off March 30 between the top two candidates: Armenia's current prime minister and its former Communist party boss.

With 93 percent of the vote counted, Prime Minister Robert Kocharian had 39 percent and Armenia's Soviet-era Communist boss Karen Demirchian had 31 percent. Ten other candidates took part, but none received more than 12 percent.

Several candidates claimed fraud in Monday's balloting, and two monitoring groups, the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, concurred Wednesday.

"In this election, although it was deeply flawed, we believe the outcome would not have been in any way changed by any of the irregularities that we observed," said Sam Brown, head of the OSCE delegation.

However, "if we had seen the same pattern in a close election, it would be impossible to judge the outcome," he said.

First Reform Jew gets

seat on local council Netanya, Israel After a four-year battle with Israel's Orthodox establishment, an American immigrant has become the first Reform Jew to sit on a local religious council.

Joyce Brenner's appointment by the Netanya city council four years ago caused a crisis in Israel's religious and political establishments. One leading religious politician likened Brenner to a terrorist at the time.

Orthodox Jews have a monopoly over religious affairs in Israel, and the Orthodox establishment is fighting to keep the small Reform and Conservative movements from gaining a foothold.

Brenner's battle has been one in a long line of struggles between the movements over the place of religion in Israel.

It took a Supreme Court decision to force Israel's religious affairs ministry to accept the appointment. When Israel's orthodox religious affairs minister refused to sign an order last year recognizing it, he was temporarily relieved of his portfolio by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who then signed the order.&lt;